I credit Lucy Foley and The Guest List with really spurring me back into reading more frequently about a year ago because I could not put that book down. Probably of her three (The Guest List, The Hunting Party, and this one), this was my least favorite. The characters didn’t seem as developed to me, or maybe I just wasn’t as invested. It was good, but I’d not say it was great, especially compared to the others. There are some decent twists and turns, but I found myself just not really caring by the end because I wasn’t that interested.

This one, on the other hand, had me pulled in from the get go, and I finished it super quickly. This is my first of hers, but I would be interested to read more of her work because this one was so engaging! It’s a little thriller, and a little mystery, with some unexpected twists and turns. It centers around a woman who was adopted as a baby finding out the story of her biological family when she turns 25 and inherits the family house. There is a cult and murder/suicide situation involved, and the story moves between her perspective, her older sister’s present day perspective, and her older brother’s telling of the past. It’s different, interesting, and I would recommend it if you like that light psychological domestic thriller kind of situation.

I don’t really know how I feel about this one. Again, I loved her last book, In Five Years, more so than The Dinner List, but this one didn’t meet my expectations compared to that. All of her books are essentially realistic with some small element of magic- so the main character loses her mother to cancer, and decides to go on their pre-planned girls’ trip to Positano alone, only to find that her mother is there- except it’s her mother at age 30, and she gets the opportunity to get to know that woman and have more time with her. I think my main issue is that I just had no connection with the main character. I found her to be whiny and selfish (she essentially dumps her husband for no reason other than grieving her mother, despite him trying to be as understanding as he can be), and that made it way harder to “root” for her, or be invested in how things turn out for her. I was not a fan for pretty much the whole book, but the last handful of chapters did make me cry as it wrapped up. I’m honestly a little meh about this one- I would recommend it if you’ve read others from her just to compare, but if this is your first of her books, I’d say skip.

And lastly, this is my second from Emily Henry- I read Beach Read last month, which is a light rom com, and this is not at all the same, haha! It’s described as “Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife”, so I picked it up because those are two of my very favorites. It somewhat meets that description- there are some time traveling/ other dimensions type things going on, and the main character is about to graduate from high school, which is, I guess, where the FNL part comes in, but other than that, it is definitely it’s own thing because I have had a really hard time trying to describe it. It’s bizarre. Like that’s the best word I know to describe it, and that’s not a bad thing- I don’t regret reading it, but it is strange, and nothing like her others as far as I’ve seen. I was rushing to finish because I was trying to beat my library loan being returned, so I probably missed some things, but the ending left me really confused and kinda disappointed if I understood it correctly. It is well written, unique, and creative, and I think if you know it’s strange going into it, it’s less jarring. Don’t pick this up expecting a cute rom com because that it’s not, but it is pretty good!